Ben Peter,an internationally known business executive and leadership scholar, has just released two inspirational non-fiction titles. His new books are titled, Get Set, March and Clearing Your Mental Deck.

Both books are a must-read for everyone who wants to excel in business, and life as a whole. This prolific author, and business development expert outperformed himself. If you’ve read many of Ben Peter’s works, you’ll definitely agree.

Widely regarded as one of the world’s leading business strategists, Ben Peter has helped countless people to reignite their passion for life through:

• health products,
• live events,
• personal mentoring,
• and coaching.

He is a Professor of Management and also the Chairman and CEO of five privately held companies. Ben Peter has a Ph.D. and an MBA in Business Management, and over fifteen years’ experience in the financial services, motivational speaking and coaching, pharmaceutical, healthcare, education, and direct selling industries.

Ben’s personal life story has been a source of immense inspiration to so many people. He believes that working hard is not enough. You have got to work smart with a high dose of discipline and willingness to be intentional with every goal and vision of greatness you have. His books also carry that same philosophy.

Enough About The Author. Let’s Discuss Get Set March and Clearing Your Mental Deck.What Are They About?

Book Description Of Get Set, March By Ben Peter.

This book was written to help readers understand the importance of building a thought process, which is an essential foundation for successfully executing a winning strategy for your vision. Success in any feat is usually a thought away.

The quality of your thoughts ultimately becomes a guiding path for your actions and eventual outcome. It is vital you pause at the end of each chapter to reflect on the nuggets of truth learned while reading this book.

Get Set March will teach you how to:

• apply these principles practically to your organization or any organized system
• see how these principles will be instrumental to your progress,
• focus on the process of creating a vision of what you want,
• accomplish your vision.

The goal of this book is to help you simplify every crucial part of your project, from the conception phase to the execution phase. Too much complexity can also hamper the success of a good project plan.

The entire process of strategic implementation, from the conception stage to the project closure, is made up of critical stages that must be appropriately implemented with caution. Every step has its unique methods.

Get Set, March! is available on Amazon  and Okadabooks

A Synopsis Of Clearing Your Mental Deck

Many people are constantly on a quest to find the secret to achieving self-actualization, which is a term synonymous with success in life. The reality is that,success in life is firstly, a product of how you think and then secondly, of what you do.

Your thoughts determine your actions. We become what we think about. We manifest physically and constantly behold our minds.  

That is why this book, Clearing Your Mental Deck, has been put together to help you truly concentrate on arriving at the most important attributes that help every human attain their greatest desires. These attributes are considered by many people as the most important qualities that help us, not only to become successful, but also to attain self-actualization.

This book is currently available on Okadabooks

 Want to read more from Ben Peter. Here’s a list of books authored by Ben Peter:

• Build Up.
• The Money Cook Book.
• Principles of the Top.
• Money Code (co-authored with Charles E. Eromosele)

 If you have inquiries about the author or his works, send a DM to his publishers, Purple Shelves Publishing House. Their twitter handle is: @PurpleShelves.

I’m off to purchase my own copies of Get Set March and Clearing Your Mental Deck.

How about you? You can post your reviews of the books in the comments section. Or you can email them to CWN. We’ll be glad to publish them.

The post Everything You Need To Know About Ben Peter’s New Titles, Get Set, March And Clearing Your Mental Deck appeared first on Creative Writing News.

TITLE: AFTER ONE

AUTHOR: Ololade Akinlabi Ige

GENRE: Fiction

1. OF PAGES: 30

YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 2019

ISBN: NIL

PUBLISHER:  The Poetician Inc.

REVIEWER: John Chizoba Vincent

In this expressive book: After One, Ololade Akinlabi Ige tells a story of lust and pleasure, the consequences of illegitimate pregnancies, relationships and pretense. And he achieves this through a narrative that is uniquely his. The book offers us astounding but emotional scenes. It portrays the cleverness of people who dare to circumvent the societal norms and principles and traditional and cultural beliefs. After One is a tale of pain and brevity, metaphorical and tones affective, and imagery of what women archive in their heart. It shows what women try to harbor in their subconscious mind as they attempt to look for a lover who would definitely love them for who they are without holding the language of their past against them or holding them ransom of their mistakes.

Sometimes, the mistakes we made when we were much younger later come back to haunt us when we have forgotten about them. However, the pleasure, the enjoyment, the tasteful part of these mistakes remain colourful and beautiful. And like the wings of the butterfly, they become part of our past and present creating an ablution, illusion and empty gratification that stands to demonstrate its shades in our lives. We can try to wrap and throw these memories into a sudden wind or try to throw them away like packs of cards, but our efforts will be in vain. The past simply stands patiently, thriving and striving in mixed tranquilities, waiting for us on the other good phase of life where living is of two forms and folds; where living is a misery and dying is not far-fetched between the thighs and the legs of a woman.

He deploys an idiom of despair to center the links between lust and love, past and present,  pretense and reality, for what one is definitely to get him/herself into as he or she tries to feel among in a vast society like ours,  trying to document love in a heart where it does not really exist. He made us to understand that the past of our lives controls the present and there is no way we can rule out our pasts if they are ugly and the viciousness of these pasts would still carve themselves out from where they are hidden whenever we look at the mirror to see who we’ve become. Some of these horrible pasts of our lives are our replicates; our shadows, we stare at them, watch them ruin us, we get entangled with them; we watch them belittle us and we watch them praise us also when they are of greatness and joyfulness.  Sometimes, these past mistakes are the photocopies of who we are going to be in future. Those things we see each second are part of our present and going to be part of us for eternity.  This was the case with Grace who was hunted by her past pleasure with Wilson, her earliest love.

After One shows that anyone who dares to love casting his or her past in the darkness, is treading on dangerous grounds. The book also shows that the norms of a forced relationship are hazy, and that both parties are simply inviting to themselves a cudgel of misery, especially when hidden secrets are revealed.

Akinlabi recalls the effect of out of wedlock pregnancy. He recollects the disadvantages and miseries that revolve around a damaged pleasure and the cravenness seen in trying to fix the past with the present. We see a Grace trying not to prevent the past from denying her the pleasures of the present. We see a lost Grace holding onto her sanity because society couldn’t abide or create a balance between the love she tries to plant in the heart of her existing lovers. Even when Wilson jilted her and got her pregnant then travelled to the US, she made up her mind to keep the pregnancy, to hide her pains and later touch it with her bare hands when the baby would arrive. After the birth of the baby, she hated her passionately that she had to hide her in the toilet one day when one of her numerous lovers came around to see her. She didn’t mind the tears of little Favour in the toilet. No, she was heartless because of her greediness and selfishness searching for love in places where love did not really exist.

“A man who truly loves you will love you for who you are,“ Granny usually advised

“Granny , I’m just nervous. I don’t want to lose him” She would reply. (Chapter 5. Pg. 22)

From the very beginning, children born outside of marriage have life stacked against them; they reek of brokenness and pains because they are left in a single hand of a mother or in a single hand of a father to be raised. In many ways, Grace tried to hide Favour, her ten year old lost pleasure from her many lovers. However, the lies cost her a lot. The men fled and she was always left with a broken heart. She was ashamed of projecting her past to her future friends, she was not going to allow them to know that she was an ‘After One’ (a person who gives birth out of wedlock). She didn’t want to be known as a second hand commodity but the more she tried to avoid or hide these things from her present, the more things fell apart. None of the men could really love her: from David to Amos, from Amos to John. The fear of revealing her true self to them always tormented her.

Grace succeeded in keeping Favour with her Mother whenever she had a date or whenever any of her lovers was visiting, but the old woman had her own responsibilities and engagements. Sometimes, she would not engage small Favour into her businesses or she might not be able to take her along whenever she was leaving or travelling to a far land to buy her wares. This was an obstacle to Grace. She found it very irritating the way people looked at her in the street, as one who has committed the grievous of all transgressions. In her immediate community, it was a shameful act, an abomination for one to be laid and later have a child. She tried training Favour to call her Auntie and her granny, Mother. But as time went on, she was surprised when her mother called Favour and her in a sitting to carefully and tenderly tell Favour that she wasn’t her mother rather Grace was. Although this didn’t go down well with Grace but she had to swallow hard.She planned to be more careful in her future dealings with Favour.  While many single mothers work wonders and raise their children well, despite the obstacles they encounter, for many others the challenge is too great and their children suffer the consequences just like Favour. The absence of married parents is related to delayed development in early childhood. Different risks associated with out-of-wedlock birth arise as the child grows older as we can see in the life of Favour trying to seek for the face of someone who she takes as a mother.

Grace has to accept her past (Favour) after David found out who she really was and left her. She had to let Favour into her life and accept her the way she is. But the most interesting part of this was David coming back to her after many months of trying to reach out to him which failed. He came back to her life and accepted Grace as a loveable being. He also accepted favor and agreed to adopt her as his daughter.

Ige carefully explores the themes of early pregnancy, consequences of unprotected sex, relationships, sex out of wedlock, failed relationship and sacrifices. He left no stone unturned as he adeptly carry us from one page of the book to the other to the very end of it. We will only find a true love in the beautiful colours of pleasure in wedlock not out of wedlock.

The post The Beautiful Colours Of Pleasure Out Of Wedlock: A Review Of Ololade Akinlabi Ige’s Book, After One. appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Have you ever considered writing a book in your indigenous language? Would you like to get tips from a polyglot author? Then you’ll be interested in joining our tweet conversation on Wednesday the 19th of June, 2019. At exactly 7PM,  Ositadimma Amakeze and Creative writing news (@cwritingnews) will be having an interesting Tweetchat. The entire conversation will revolve around reading and writing in indigenous languages (other than English). Of course, the author will discuss his writing process and how he wrote the brilliant book,  ‘Anụ Gbaa Ajọ Egbe‘. You are invited to follow this tweetchat on # iyil2019.

A few months ago, 2019 was declared United Nations year of Indigenous languages. In line with this, culture activist, Ositadimma Amakeze wrote and published a novel ‘Anụ Gbaa Ajọ Egbe’. It was his own way of practicing his cultural theory of Glocalisation. This brilliant author believes that writing in Indigenous languages is an effective tool for glocalisation.

About the Book

Anụ Gbaa Ajọ Egbe… is essentially a fable. The author wrote this book to promote and preserve some of the most interesting and important folktales which have been passed down orally, in Igbo land. The title which may appear controversial gives an insight into the clever and unpredictable tortoise. For where there is a tortoise, there are limitless possibilities. Remember, it was he, who chose to be addressed as “Unu dum”(all of you) when he joined a flock of birds to a feast in heaven. You better see why he is the Nkpọnkpọ kpọkịrịkpọ, one of a kind, no other animal is capable of begetting but she Tortoise herself!

You need not be troubled about how this conflict will be resolved unless you are unaware that words are spoken with wit and skills. Ever marvelled at how the tongue and teeth can coexist peacefully? Although the teeth crave for the taste of meat, it never tries to hurt the tongue.

Ndị Igbo would say, “the masquerade that dances at the village square does not dance for itself.” Mbe (Tortoise), who is the protagonist is in the plot and conspiracy with the other members of the animal kingdom. Names are deliberately written in the capital that each may stand out and therefore, be outstanding!

Full-scale humour is guaranteed, logical thinking required in quantum dose, and above all, the appreciation of animals as beings worthy of respect is provoked! This piece is unique, interesting, and captivating, especially for lovers of indigenous fables, it brings the reader back to his roots. This commendable book is an imprint of Purple shelves, a young and thriving publishing company in Lagos, Nigeria.

About the Author

‘Anụ Gbaa Ajọ Egbe‘… is the second Igbo novel written by Ositadimma Amakeze. His first, ‘Ọgazị Amaka’ has been read in several secondary and tertiary institutions, including College of Education Umunze. In no distant time, he hopes to unveil his poetry collection which is completely tailored in the Igbo language. He is the author of ‘Teeth of a Snail’ a captivating book, which is widely read; it was read in Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka. Ositadimma Amakeze is also the author of ‘The Last Carver’, ‘Medley of The Muse’ and others; all of which are accessible online at Amazon.com, and in bookshops.

He is the founder of Young Women & Men Creative Association (YOWAMCA), an NGO. YOWAMCA can be accessed via #TeamYowamca. Ositadimma is a certified ÓMÓ Ambassador Award winner, as well as a DICIDE Smart Ambassador. Recently, he received another prize at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. He hails from Nimo in Njikoka L.G.A, in Anambra State. He is also a Catholic priest at one of the parishes in the Awka Diocese.

What Other Readers Have Said About This Unputdownable Book!

The post Event # iyil2019 / CWN Will Be Tweetchatting With Ositadimma Amakeze About His Recent Fable Titled, Anụ Gbaa Ajọ Egbe appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Members of the literati are literally waiting with bated breaths for the release of Flight Lieutenant Anthonia Egbujiobi’s brilliant, life-changing book titled, ‘BUILDING CASTLES WITH PEBBLES’.

So What’s This Awesome Book About?

In ‘Building Castles with Pebbles’, the author puts forth principles to adopt if one wishes to make the most out of little, and make advancements in life.

She also shares her own experiences and testimonies from adopting these tried-and-trusted principles and affirms that “Little can make a BIG difference.” It is actually one of the best works of creative non-fiction that has been released this year.

Important Facts To Note About The Author {Flight Lieutenant Anthonia Egbujiobi } –

Anthonia Efe Egbujiobi is a Lawyer, and an officer of the Nigerian Air Force who has dedicated her life to serving God and humanity. She is a Conflict Resolutor, motivational Speaker, Civil -Military Expert, a Professional Negotiator and Mediator.

:

Anthonia Efe Egbujiobi is married to Engr. Declan Obi Egbujiobi, and they are blessed with two sons, Ryan and Jason.

Building Castles With Pebbles will be released as an imprint of Purple Shelves; a young and thriving publishing firm in Lagos, Nigeria. This life-changing nonfiction book will be released on the 22nd of June, at an exclusive event in Abuja. Copies will be readily available immediately in bookstores.

Click to see our list of 10 Best African Booksellers (Besides Amazon).  Most of the booksellers (particularly thebookdealerng) on that list will be stocking copies of the book. You can order online, and they’ll ship it to you. Awesome isn’t it?

To learn more about how to purchase this book, follow and tweet to the publisher at @PurpleShelves.

Blurb: This is a must have for any focused and driven person. Some books are good on, and for the shelf but Building Castles with pebbles is a success manual, most especially for the youths who want to build from the top. Great work from an excellent mind.

• Iyeru Godsglory Oluwole

Public Officer, Digital Forensic Expert, and Data Analyst.

The post New Awesome Book Alert: Building Castles With Pebbles by Anthonia Egbujiobi. appeared first on Creative Writing News.

What does it mean to be(come) Nigerian?

Elnathan John: Never, ever explain satire (calmly).

I: I won’t. I can’t. I just want to give an answer to the question.

To be Nigerian is to be a hustler, and Elnathan teaches us in his latest book, “Becoming Nigerian: A Guide”.

*

I have made a whole lot of mistakes in my life, and buying bad books has always been part of them; but picking up Elnathan John’s latest book “Becoming Nigerian: A Guide” (published by Cassava Republic earlier this year) from one of the shelves stacked with beautiful and tempting books, at Ouida House, is one of the best decisions I have made. From the yellow and black cover of the book, which makes me imagine Lagos and its danfos, though the yellow is not the too-ripe mango yellow, with the pregnant police man standing like a tree, and the loud mosques and blaring churches on the back cover—“Becoming Nigerian” is a delight.

While the book is a guide, a kind of manual on what it means to be Nigerian [‘at home and abroad, or on your way to hell or heaven’], it is also, for me, a letter to a friend, from a friend who lives under the same conditions as the friend he/she/x is writing to.  This is what makes “Becoming Nigerian: A Guide” a book worthy of reading. But there is more behind six than just seven.

*

The book begins “IN THE BEGINNING…”, with the colonialist, and leads us to the now. In the first chapter, there are eight Bible-like chapters: chapter 1 tells of the beginning of Nigeria, in a Genesis-1 way (how ‘²[T]he British said: “Let there be Nigeria. And there was Nigeria.”’); and he takes us on until we get to a retelling of The Beatitude: ‘Blessed are [those who steal from] the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of political rebirth.’ (Chapter 7, verse 1). He ends this chapter in Chapter 8 with what I call “Aliko’s Prayer.”

Elnathan writes: ‘¹The benevolent dictator gathered all his disciples and taught them a new prayer. He said,

²You must pray then this way:

³Our father, who art Aliko, hallowed be thy wealth…’

In that very first chapter Elnathan summarizes all that the book is about: Nigeria, a country where politics and religion and everything else is a hustle; and this is basically because Nigeria began as a hustle, the white man’s hustle. But then Elnathan points no finger, though his finger is everywhere.

In the book, the Spiritual and the Temporal and the Political and Social and Legal are one, too: they are hustle.

Even Love is a hustle. It is just as political as our dirty politics: there are ways to play your cards, and there are ways not to. As the man, you have to be very protective of your woman; as the woman, ‘never ask who his female friends are’. The man must never do something as stupid as go to the kitchen; but the woman must understand that cooking for her man is magical while the so-called romantic words is a waste of time. With that advise, Elnathan swears God will bless your ‘romantic hustle.’

While Elnathan himself claims that there is a gender-bias in the romantic or husband-housewife politics, he makes it clear that most Nigerian women are comfortable with the way of things—which is one thing we don’t talk/write about when discussing issues of masculinity/feminism in Nigeria. Are some women comfortable with the status quo? Yes. Because: “[i]f you fail to [be over-protective], even she will begin to doubt your love,” he writes.

In very subtle ways, he condemns these things and those perpetrating them; but still showing, rather than telling, that lawlessness in Nigeria is like blood. That, somehow, in this country: survival actually depends on how “smart” (and that means different things to different people) you can be to get what you want. The good mechanic must know how to steal without really stealing; the police man can start out thin and flat-bellied but will soon find out how bad a body like that looks; Pastor should know very well how to play politics in his church, even when it relates to his wife packing out because she caught him planting his seeds in other soils!

If Elnathan sees those as out-of-the-normal, fine; but none of it surprises him, because he knows very well that to be Nigerian is to be ‘out-of-the-normal’, because normalcy does not work in this country. Maybe it is, in fact, for the absence of normalcy in Nigeria that Elnathan himself claims to be ‘in an abusive relationship’ with it (Acknowledgements).

*

Though Elnathan does well at exposing Nigeria, to the Nigerian and non-Nigerian, it is not what makes this book a delight; what makes “Becoming Nigerian: A Guide” a delight is its language. Unlike many other books about Nigeria, this one is Nigerian to its core. Written in Nigeria English and a sprinkle of pidgin (there is even a chapter for ‘Common Nigerian Phrases and Expressions’), and in the clear voice of our guide, Elnathan, you will not be able to put it down—though, if you are the pastor or politician or mechanic or Nigerian/non-Nigerian his finger is pointed at, you might fling it somewhere, or even burn it. But: to put it down will be impossible.

*

Yes. Reading “Becoming Nigerian” reminded me very much of my own Nigerian-ness, of what I really am: a hustler.

I: Even your book is a hustle, right?

Elnathan: I am coming.

The post Book Review / Elnathan John’s Becoming Nigerian—A Guide appeared first on Creative Writing News.

The post An Evening of Reminiscences” Organized In Loving Memory Of Professor Pius Adesanmi / How To Attend appeared first on Creative Writing News.

In the play, ​The House of Bernarda Alba ​by Federico Garcia Lorca, oppression, death, depression, and desire are recurrent themes that relate to each other.

The play, la casa de Bernarda Alba, also focuses on what happens when freedom and individuality are restricted. Almost all the characters in The House of Bernarda Alba fall into these major themes.

“Needle and thread for women. Whiplash and mules for men.” (Lorca 1. 1. 200-201), is a line that signifies the oppressive world that Bernarda Alba lives in.

In the eloquently written play, it is quoted often about how a woman must behave in society notably around men. For example, Angustias is given advice from her mother Bernarda Alba that she must not ask her fiancé Pepe el Romano what is on his mind. This is because a wife must appear calm on the surface despite the circumstances.

Oppression is the ultimate theme of the play,The House of Bernarda Alba, since it is what the predicament is centered around. At the opening of the play, Bernarda Alba’s second husband dies and Bernarda establishes that she and her daughters will be in mourning for eight years.

During these years, the girls are supposed to be doing needlework. This births a problem since they are not allowed to go outside or associate in any affairs. This is the first symbol of the theme of oppression besides the obvious patriarchy in Roman Catholic Spain.

Bernarda is restricting her daughters’ freedom. Eight years feel like an eternity for her daughters. Unable to bear the monotony and the isolation, they go insane later on in the play.

The house can be a representation of Bernarda’s twisted mind since it was inverted with a courtyard that was enclosed outside. This shows that Bernarda has a closed mind and does not want her daughters to leave even though the house tries to give false security of looking similar to the outside world when in reality it is nearly unattainable to have a connection with anyone beyond the house’s walls.

Another character that oppresses others is the servant, Poncia. When the beggar woman comes in front of the door asking for leftovers, Poncia justifies not feeding her by saying “Dogs are alone too, and they live”(Lorca 1. 1. 85). In conclusion, everyone is oppressing everyone in some way or another, especially the sisters who harass each other rather than loving each other.

Death is the second recurrent theme in the play, la casa de Bernarda Alba. It is as if Lorca added this theme because it had a powerful effect and meaning. The play began with a death and ended with a death in a literal sense and a metaphorical sense.

In the beginning, the audience is greeted with the characters dealing with the death of their father and at the end, the characters are dealing with the death of their sister.

Due to the suicide of Adela, the theme of death can also be associated with escape. It shows that Adela hated her life so much and was so drastically in love with Pepe that she would rather die than continue to live on.

In, la casa de Bernarda Alba, death is also symbolized with the black clothes the daughters wear throughout the day while the white clothes they wear is used to symbolize purity. In a metaphorical way, death is represented not only as a form of oppression but depression as well.

Martirio’s depression lurks and it causes her to wait around until her time is up, Poncia believes that giving into your natural sexual instincts leads to death, and Adela suggests that repression is the same thing as death. In my understanding of reading la casa de Bernarda Alba, the moral question I think Lorca was trying to bring up is, “How should we live our lives?” since we all are going to pass away someday.

Death creates a lot of stress in the household and the heat is a symbol that helps carries the theme of oppression. It refers to Bernarda’s oppression and frustration and expresses Bernarda’s dominance and fury throughout the play.

Heat is also a symbol of desire by the presence of fans and lemonade which the women are using to keep cool. In, la casa de Bernarda Alba, the symbol of heat can also represent the daughters going into heat or ovulation due to their anger at their mother as well due to their desire for affection.

For instance, the battle between Martirio and Angustias during Angustias loss of her boyfriend’s picture shows that she isn’t the only daughter who desires affection. Adela actually has intercourse with her sister’s fiance.

Overall the themes of oppression, death, depression, and desire were all relevant in the play, la casa de Bernarda Alba, in many ways.  All the aforementioned themes helped to tell the story of what happens in the house of Bernarda Alba.

This play also reflects Lorca’s life since he was a gay man living in a time where homosexuality wasn’t accepted as it is today. I believe his feelings are well expressed since there was a quote that said: “better never to lay eyes on a man, never to have seen one.”

The themes that are represented in la casa de Bernarda Alba are all connected to each other.

As an example, the play, the house of Bernarda Alba, shows how desire can lead to death. The daughters chase after someone who is not worth their time due to the fury that is inside them. This leads to one suicide, heartbreak, a loss of engagement, and an emotional split of the family.

 

Works Cited

 

Lorca, Federico Garcia, The House of Bernarda Alba. ​The Norton Anthology of Drama​.Vol. 2 J Ellen Gainor et. al. W.W. Norton & Company, 2018. 630-663

Bio: Kathryn is a freelance writer and blogger in the Asheville, NC area who enjoys the creative writing realm and is currently pursuing a degree in psychology and minoring in creative writing.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you might be interested in reading these:

Writing Workshop With Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Learning To Write Like A Nobel Laureate At The Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop

As well as

How To Start A Novel: A Guide To Writing Bestselling Fiction.

Resonance: A Personal Essay on the 2018 Purple Hibiscus Trust Creative Writing Workshop

Photo by Reto Niederhauser on Unsplash

The post Major Themes and Symbols ​From The House of Bernarda Alba appeared first on Creative Writing News.

Length: 130
Genre: Erotic Short Fiction/ Poems (an anthology)
ISBN: if any
Publisher / Year: Brittle Paper, 2018
Source: https://brittlepaper.com/2018/12/erotic-africa-the-sex-anthology-read-e-book-exploring-millennial-sex-culture-and-romance-in-african-cities/
Why I Read It: My work was featured in the anthology, and because also it also has the work of some new writers that I respect. And it was published by Brittle Paper!
Date Read: 14/15 December, 2018
Reviewed By: Ernest O. Ògúnyemí

The first time I came across sex in literature, described with some attention to details, was in Patricia Cornwell’s “Black Notice”—that scene where Scarpetta lets the young and hot Talley cool her off. And there’s “Shopgirl,” a novella by Steve Martins. But the first time I came across real sex in African literature, it was in a small novel titled “Rainbows Are for Lovers.” I remember the book was slim, had a blue cover, a Spectrum bestseller in its days, and was a story about a guy being sacked by a boss, who wanted his girlfriend (or something like that). The guy tried his hand at a number of things in order to raise enough money to pay his girlfriend’s bride-price, so as not to lose her to his used-to-be boss. He followed every request in newspapers in order to get a job, but he never got one. Until he meets this lady, once the wife of an imprisoned politician in her father’s age-group, and they fall in love. And the story becomes a mad tale of love and hunger and fire and sex. That book is yet to leave me.

But, I would say, I have not come across an African book/anthology all about sex. There has been sex in African literature, yes. I’m thinking of that scene in Adichie’s “Half of a Yellow Sun” where Olanna feels something close to grace as Richard got inside her; and there is Okonkwo reaching for the knot at the edge of Ekwefi’s wrapper in the master’s “Things Fall Apart”. I’m also thinking of Lotanna reaching into Kamsi’s trousers, his lips and tongue dancing, Kamsi’s legs wrapped around the former’s waist in Arinze’s ‘God’s Children Are Little Broken Things’. And there is this part in Kiprop Kimutai’s ‘The Man at the Bridge,’ where both Kwambai and Franco are on the floor writhing like earthworms, and the air changing as the latter entered Kwambai. But one thing there hasn’t been is: sex stories told as sex stories. Nude sex—to put it simply. One thing about how we write sex in African lit is: We write it with our mouths closed, or we put a cloth over it, like the church in Rome put a baroque metal veil on Angelo’s The Risen Christ.

The writers in Erotic Africa, however, tell sex stories as sex stories. The body is not protected behind a veil of shame in this anthology, it is brought to us the way a new born comes: naked. Heads are not ashamed of been in-between legs, where the tongue works its magic on the clit. Even a Father knows how to rhythmically use his fingers, and a mulokole (born-again) cannot stop herself from dreaming of men who know how to walk a woman through paradise in those intense moments. There is a thread that runs through the stories in the anthology: the life they all have. Each story in Erotic Africa breathes.

These are stories about how sex can wound and how it can heal; how it can break and mend. Stories that teach us that sex can be taught, should be learnt for some, and that there is no shame in teaching what Brittle Paper refers to as “Millennial Sex”. But none of the stories in the pages of this anthology paints the same picture of sex that we, in Africa, have painted for a long time: that sex is evil, or could be evil when it is too much. Or better put: there is a way you have sex that is dirty. These writers give us dirty stories that are clean in delivery; dirty stories of, how I put it in my retweet of the anthology on Twitter, ‘RAW’ sex.

In Anthony Madukwe’s ‘Moonlight’ we learn that sex might as well be a spirit, like the devil in Eloghosa Osunde’s ‘Nightwind’, stretching itself through every part of us; that it could possess us anywhere. How it can make us become ‘forgetful … of common sense,’ so much that Madukwe’s character ‘feeds his erection in a public eatery’. This is nothing like the sex we read in Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart” when the big-man, Okonkwo, carries Ekwefi and reaches for the knot at the edge of her wrapper in the darkness—the kind of sex Kwoh writes that the husband of her main character gives her. The kind of sex where ‘his dick was the only contact he made with my body’, ‘my husband would not recognize my pussy in a lineup.’ (Indulgence, 16)

It might be said that Achebe described pre-colonial sex (in a flashback sentence of twenty-seven words), which is an indirect way of saying: sex in pre-colonial Africa did not have all the intricacies it has today. Accepted. But reading Jerry Edo’s ‘My Father’s Widow,’ which is, though not pre-colonial, set in a community in Niger-Delta, where they still practice widow inheritance, might show us that reaching a conclusion that sex in pre-colonial Africa wasn’t so full, that it dripped like the soggy centre of a burning woman’s body, is not all-true.

In Jerry’s story, his father’s widow, Otiti, knows how to teach him to weed her ‘overgrown’ farm by helping him to ‘the road to her farm’ (her breasts) first. She tells him to touch them, ‘play with’ them, and ‘suck’ one while touching the other. And then after keeping him patient enough to make him boil with passion, when her ground had become sodden, she asks him in.

In other stories people find love in the strangest place—like Zara, who plays a game and meets this woman who works a dildo into her body (Wouldn’t It Be Nice?); like the lady from The Sheer Review who gets a sex that won’t leave her for a long time in ‘The Hourglass Gallery’.

And there is the poetry, heavy and light, strong and tender, passionate and controlled. Chibuihe Obi’s ‘Self Portrait as a Building with Rooms’ is a rich poem about how sex can open doors to rooms you never knew existed inside you; it’s about coming to the understanding that ‘in the beginning’ God did not ‘bless me with a hole’ for nothing, that this hole is a doorway to entering the locked rooms; that, in fact, the hole makes me ‘whole’. Also, in Hussani Abdulrahim’s ‘How Do You Feel?’ that intense moment spreads out in fine detailed description, almost becoming what Toby Abiodun calls ‘an eternity of love.’ The place of sex becomes a place of oneness, too, as the last lines of Hussani’s poem reads: ‘Let me make you cross heaven,/ As we merge, losing selves.’

I have returned to some of these stories/poems more than twice, just to feed my mind their never fading beauty. And this is because, as the lyrics of a Naija hip-hop song goes, there is not ‘too much juice, too much salt’ to the stories. The heat of the stories never gets so hot that they cease to give you warmth, that they begin to burn. The stories are so real, I could not put my fingers on what was fiction and what was non-fiction. There is no line separating them in the anthology, all you get to notice is that the stories never bore.

I found Osinachi—the artist who designed the cover of the anthology—’s ‘You Handsome Lady-Killer,’ particularly very fascinating. A story about a guy who strangled a girl to death while on her. But unknown to him, his friend, Hassan, out of curiosity, already planted a camera in the room. This story might seem unreasonable, though, because why would I (you) strangle a girl to death while on her and still keep going? But one finds it fascinating when one considers the brilliance with which Osinachi delivers it, and considering the fact that a reason was given for the murderer’s action: he was paid to do what he did. Something that is becoming commonplace in Nigeria.

As a Yoruba saying goes: ‘shoki l’obe oge,’ which roughly translates as ‘You only get a little of a good soup’. Though very brief, each story/poem in this anthology gifts you a world you will return to for days. Probably months. Or years? As Raphael D’abdon wrote in his poem ‘Touch’ in the anthology: ‘I come, again and again,/ spilling seed, and names of lovers long/ gone.’

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Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie will be moderating Michelle Obama’s UK exclusive book launch event, slated on Monday, 3rd, December, 2018 at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall. Isn’t that exciting?! We are so envious of the people who would be attending the event!

The highly anticipated book is a memoir titled, “Becoming”

“Reflecting on her memoir, Michelle Obama will invite audiences into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her — from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she will recount her triumphs and her disappointments – both public and private – and in candidly recounting moments from her own extraordinary journey, Mrs Obama will also share life lessons learned, and inspire people to become the very best version of themselves.”

As part of her work with and in support of young people, Michelle Obama, Southbank Centre and Penguin Live will be donating 300 free tickets to secondary school pupils from across London and the UK, as well as some local charities and along with the rest of the audience will receive a hardback copy of Becoming.

We are already anticipating the great conversations that would happen at the event; two great, intelligent and accomplished women on the same stage! Get you pens and papers out for the powerful quotes that we would surely have after the event.

News reaching us is that the tickets for the event are already sold out. Don’t despair, hopefully, a video of the event would be released later on.

Were you able to get a ticket? Do tell us how it goes when you attend. Don’t keep the juicy details to yourself. You may write about your experience in the comment section, or send us a book review or opinion piece. Visit our “write for us“ page for more details

Thank you.

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